SCUBA diving the "Pillars of Salt"

This morning we headed over to Div'Ocean (pronounced "devotion") to have a couple guided SCUBA dives on the Bonaire reef. Our guides Joob (probably spelling it wrong, but pronounced Yoob) and Natalie (both Dutch expats, as seem to make up at least half of the permanent resident population here) drove us down to the south of the island to take a couple of his favorite dives. The first was The Rock, an unofficial dive site, named for a huge rock at the bottom of the ocean, but we didn't go see that. The goal was to SCUBA at 40-60 feet along the side of the coral reef. Unfortunately, my ears but the kibosh on that; on my first dive of the year I can't get one ear to equalize for a long time. For about half the dive I was only able to get down to about 10 feet and still feeling pain in the one ear. Gavin and Joob hung out on the bottom of the shallows, only about 30 feet, and not over the edge of the reef as planned. About halfway through the dive as we were turning around to go back, I felt a POW in the "bum" ear and it FINALLY figured out how to equalize, so I was able to go to the bottom for the rest of the dive, but by that time it was too late to go over the shelf and go deeper. Poo on my ear - it made me miss the Blue Hole last year in Belize, too! But I still got to see a BIG barracuda, a sea turtle and an eel. :)

On this sunnier day, the condenser lakes are even more pink than when we last saw them! We SCUBA dived across from them.

Ready to dive!

Sea turtle in the shallow part of the reef.

Barracuda - the pic doesn't do justice to its size.

Nobody looks attractive in SCUBA gear. :)

A pretty, iridescent fish.

Our second dive was Salt Pier, so named because it is the pier from which the salt collected in the salt condenser lakes is exported off the island. I had no trouble equalizing my ears, so I was able to go to depth right away with everyone else. We swam through and between the pillars holding up the pier, and these pillars were covered in coral, sponges and more. They were also a home to a LOT of fish - I was able to swim through a HUGE school of beautiful yellow and silver fish - probably at least a thousand fish in it! Definitely the highlight of my day in the water!

This is the salt pier. We SCUBA dived underneath it.

Me swimming in seriously a THOUSAND fish!

Sea life on and around the pillars of Salt Pier.

After our dive guides drove us back to the apartment (their dive shop is in Caribbean Court, where we are staying), we took our own car and drove back down past the salt lakes to Pink Beach. According to Lonely Planet "Pink Beach" was so named because the broken coral and shells that make its sand add a pinkish hue to the sand. We arrived at Pink Beach and were surprised at the LACK of sand. Most of the beach was made up of broken up and worn down pieces of coral! This is the only beach I have ever seen that is made entirely of coral bits - not a "real" rock in site! We had intended to hang out and read on the beach, but there as no shade available on this beach in late afternoon, so we headed right back into town. :)

Pink Beach. As you can see, not really pink at all. :)

Coral bits that make up Pink Beach.

After our brief viewing of Pink Beach, we headed back into town and had some ice cream at Lilly's and read our books in their comfortable booths for a while. Then we wandered toward a Peruvian restaurant called Plazita Limena that had caught my eye with their sign advertising ceviche. On the way I stopped and bought a hat - my head is sore from being sunburned where my hair parts. :)

We ate our dinner pretty early, so we we pretty much alone in the Plazita Limena for the first hour we were there. We ordered ceviche as an appetizer (Gavin is a good sport - he HATES ceviche but will still eat it with me because I love it! :) ) and it was pretty good, almost as good as we got in Peru. I had the "Land and Sea," for a main course, which was a steak and some garlic shrimp. Pretty good, but a kind of tough steak. We had a "choco volcano" for dessert, which was a YUMMY chocolate lava cake - my favorite part of the whole meal! We also tried a pitcher of their sangria... not so great. Honestly, probably the worst sangria I have ever tasted - so watered down with sparkling water and some kind of fruity liquor that we could barely taste the red wine! Both of us had to force it down and wished we had ordered it by the glass instead. :) After dinner we headed back to relax in the apartment for a while, making it an early night.

 

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